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Talk:Mokèlé-mbèmbé/@comment-35371364-20190415055829/@comment-35371364-20190422030125
The mokele-mbembe is only reported from the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin, and Cameroon. Similar cryptids have been reported from throughout Central Africa, but they are not the same as the mokele-mbembe. You are confusing the Republic of the Congo (Congo) with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). The mokele-mbembe is reported from Congo and apparently parts of western DR Congo - but mainly from the Likouala region of Congo. Uganda has a border with eastern DR Congo. The website hoaxes.org is mistaken (it also wrongly describes the British colony of Northern Rhodesia as German): I reiterate, the mokele-mbembe has nothing to do with the chipekwe, and neither does the Gapelle/Lepage hoax. As you can see yourself, the chipekwe information you posted makes not mention of the mokele-mbembe. Hagenbeck did think the chipekwe was a living sauropod (based on very little evidence), but that does not make it the same as the mokele-mbembe any more than - for example - the suggestion that some Bigfoot sightings may involve bears makes Bigfoot the same cryptid as the irkuiem. The chipekwe is variably described as a hippopotamus-like animal with a single ivory horn; a sabre-toothed cat; or, in one sighting made in the 1950's, yes, an animal with a long neck and a small head. The reason for the inconsistent descriptions is because "chipekwe" is basically the Bemba equivalent of the English word "monster". The very first reports of the chipekwe were based on two sources: Hans Schomburgk and an unnamed English big game hunter, on whose reports Hagenbeck claimed the existence in Zambia of an "immense and wholly unknown animal" which is "a huge monster, half elephant, half dragon". The Brontosaurus part is just his personal opinion on the story. The chipekwe was later reported by Joseph E. Hughes, Robert Young, and R. M. Green. They all independantly reported Zambian stories of the chipekwe, though none of them described it physically because it was said to rarely leave the water. However, they were told of (different) specific incidences in which it had killed hippopotamuses and people, and of an incident in which one was speared to death. But this is irrelevent, because my point is that the chipekwe has nothing to do with the mokele-mbembe. It is reported from almost the opposite side of the continent, and is only described as resembling the mokele-mbembe in a single dubious sighting by a tourist from 1954. When it is lumped in with the Congo cryptids, it's always compared to the emela-ntouka, not to the mokele-mbembe. The mokele-mbembe (bear in mind that the name may be used in the Lingala language to refer to any big, unidentified animal in the Likouala region) was first reported to westerners in 1913, when the Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz collected accounts of it from what is now Congo. His information, which was basically the same as the information still given by Likoualan people, was corraborated by fellow explorer Leo von Boxberger. The mokele-mbembe was next reported by Ivan T. Sanderson in 1932. He wrote it "embulu-em'bembe". After that, it seems to have been mostly forgotten until Roy P. Mackal's investigations in the 1980's. This information is not difficult to find: it is present in all the major cryptozoological works that deal with the mokele-mbembe and other supposed African living dinosaurs. The best source is Mackal's A Living Dinosaur? (1987), which does discuss the chipekwe, but does not consider it the same as the mokele-mbembe. If you're not convinced, lets go through the contentious passage line-by-line. :"The creatures existence was perpetuated by westerners." Yes, this is true, but the westerners were only repeating what they were told by the locals, and the information given does not seem to hae changed in 100 years. :"...He frequented trips to africa to capture animals, when he came back he started telling stories of the Mokele-mbembe..." This is patently false. Hagenbeck never spoke of the mokele-mbembe to my knowledge, as I have demonstrated above. He did speak of living dinosaurs in general, and he thought he had found evidence of a living sauropod, but he was not talking about the mokele-mbembe. :"The locals tended to disagree with his stories." Again, false. A number of other people who went to Lake Bangweulu confirmed that the information reiterated by Hagenbeck about the chipekwe was true. :"The Ugandan leader said they may be no truth to such story." What Ugandan leader? What story - Hagenbeck's chipekwe or the modern moekele-mbembe? And why should be listen to the word of a Ugandan tribal leader (who probably never left Uganda) on Zambian or Congolese subjects? I'm not even arguing about the reality of the mokele-mbembe (though I do think it's real in some form), I just don't think those lines have any place in the article.